


Overhang

by psylocke



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: CarolJess Week, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 20:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psylocke/pseuds/psylocke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There comes a point when even Carol Danvers can't sit idly by and let Jess wallow anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overhang

**Author's Note:**

> So. CarolJess week was a while ago. But I was only around for a bit of it, and had no prep time, and then I got feels, so... consider this a late gift to the fans? I know it's bad, and the ending is terrible, and the whole thing reads like a child wrote it, but I had inspiration and I know better than to ignore that pestering voice. Hopefully it has something redeeming. They're some of my favourites, but I've never really written them. Happy Holidays 'n stuff!

There comes a point when even a person with the patience of a saint reaches her breaking point. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but Carol Danvers is a pretty unflappable person, right up until you do something so abjectly stupid that not even she can sit by and watch you descending into a pit of complete mental breakdown. 

I don’t know what I was expecting, I just—I got to a point in my life that I was so complacent in my melancholy that I didn’t realize I was projecting it to the world. It was baseline for me, the standard to which I held my daily esteem. For a while, I actually thought I was doing well. Apparently not, judging by the twenty-one gun salute sounding against my door. Apparently very not.

“You know people _sleep_ at this hour—” I said, swinging open the door and speaking before even realizing who it was. 

Carol had a way of making herself known without me needing to see her. The hand on my shoulder and the stern, “Let’s go,” did exactly that. 

She didn’t, as one might expect, lead me into the hallway, but back into my own apartment, kicking the door closed and stopping just long enough to latch it. “Where are we—?”

“Out. Haven’t eaten.”

Leading me towards the patio, not even letting me throw on my shoes. “Can we—can we talk about this?”

A forceful nudge had me walking into the back door, turning the handle, a sharp burst of cold air hitting me immediately. “Trust me,” she said firmly, a smirk playing on her face. “We’re _gonna_ talk.”

“—All the patio furniture’s covered in snow.”

“We’re not staying,” she said, stepping out into the brisk air, taking in a big breath, proud as a peacock. I’m not entirely sure it’s possible for a person’s back to be so straight — mine is consistently hunched over. “There’s a place I like to go. It clears my head when things get tough.”

The words got lost in my throat as she approached the edge of the balcony and pushed herself over the railing, straddling it as if she wasn’t dangling fifteen storeys in the air. “I can’t fly without my suit,” I told her plainly.

Her eyes narrowed, the lines on her forehead becoming all too distinct. “Sure you can. You’ve done it plenty of times.”

I licked my lips, caught in my own deceit. “Well.” She quirked a brow at me. “To be _fair_ , I never understood why I could do that.”

Slinging her other leg over, Carol turned her head back at me. We made eye contact. It wasn’t as pleasant as one might think. My gaze read ‘what the hell are we doing?’ while hers read ‘got any more excuses?’

I did. I always had more excuses. By now it was more a reflex than an actual defence mechanism. Even if it was something that I wanted to do, my mouth found the words before my brain realized it was wrong. “You’re not supposed to be flying,” I stated, folding my arms in protest. That wasn’t so much an excuse as a valid reasoning, but knowing Carol, she wouldn’t make the distinction. 

“When has that _ever_ stopped me before?” Don’t let the questioning tone fool you. It wasn’t a question. It _definitely_ was not a question. “Let’s go. We’re going. I’m going. You’re coming with me.” She put her hand around my wrist, tugging me closer. For a moment, a split second, it all didn’t seem so bad, but that emotion was thoroughly covered up by the look of pained shock on my face. “I’ve sat by and watched for way too long. So it’s high time I do something about it.”

Her footing was tight against the very edge of the balcony, pressing herself right against the guard rail. If I didn’t know any better, I might have been worried she was going to fall. “I’m _fine_ ,” I said. I lied. “Honestly.” Adding the tag only served to make it worse.

“Jessica Merryweather Drew—” 

“That is _not_ my middle name.”

“Jessica Miriam Drew,” she repeated flatly. “Either _you_ get your tush over this guard rail or _I_ pick up you and force you to come with me.” Carol Danvers was many things, amongst them my best friend, a royal pain in the ass, and a damn good superhero. One thing she wasn’t was a bluffer. She’d made that abundantly clear. 

I wasn’t quite so assured in my own abilities to hop right over, but I approached the railing and tried to hoist myself up, clinging on for dear life. It was stupid, I know. I can fly. I can survive crazy falls. Doesn’t stop me from being afraid of my own balcony. “Tell me where we’re going,” I asked her, nearly losing my balance. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t go back inside and call Luke to escort you away from me.”

“Luke’s been up for three days trying to get Dani to sleep,” she shot back instantly, too quick to have been a lie. “We’re not going far. I promise. Come on.”

With skipping a beat, she stepped off the ledge and allowed herself to fall a few feet before picking herself back up. Carol was a risk taker, a daredevil, a pilot. She liked the feeling of coming in for a landing. It just made me queasy. “I should have made Monica my best friend,” I complained, pushing myself off the ledge. “I bet she doesn’t go knocking on anybody’s door at three in the morning—” 

“It’s barely midnight,” Carol said with a bit of a sigh, shaking her head at me. “C’mon, I want to go fast—feel the wind in my hair.” I knew that tone, it meant she wanted to race. Despite my best intentions to argue, to remind her she wasn’t supposed to be doing these things, she always already gone, and I found myself chasing after her through downtown Manhattan. 

It wasn’t hard to find out where she was taking me, knowing her as well as I did. We cut up through Turtle Bay in midtown, all the way up to Central Park, but she made a stark turn around Avengers Mansion, further south. I followed her upstream, unable to catch her even at my top speed, but I didn’t rely on tricks and flourishes to make my point. By the time we reached 30 Rockefeller Plaza, I was just a few feet behind her, landing on top of the building a mere five seconds late.

Trying to catch my breath, I crouched down, looking out over the city from out new vantage point. I knew, immediately, why she’d wanted to come here. It wasn’t her usual excuse, either — _maybe I’ll get to meet Tina Fey —_ the fact of the matter was that the view was beautiful. Below us, the statues of Atlas and Prometheus glistened, the newly lit tree shone brightly, and even at this hour, people moved in graceful circles around the rink. 

“This is what you miss,” she told me, approaching from behind. “When you get lost in your head. The world keeps going, y’know? Even if you’re not letting yourself be a part of it.”

I let myself plunk down on the cold cement, inching closer to the edge of the building, letting my legs dangle over. My heart fell through my chest, but that was a small distraction from the awe sinking in my stomach. It took me a minute to answer her, feeling my mouth drying out. “It’s nice.”

“That’s all you’re gonna say?” She sounded closer, and when I looked over, I saw her seating herself next to me. There was a short distance between us, which I knew meant I was in trouble — well, I’d always _known_ that, but it was getting difficult to ignore it now. 

The thought of letting myself fall, catching myself halfway, and running until she got tired crossed my mind. Then I remembered how Carol Danvers _never_ got tired. “Yeah,” was what I settled on. 

For the briefest of seconds, I thought maybe she was going to let me drop it. I could only be so lucky. “Are you going to talk about it or am I going to have to coax it out of you?”

I’d known her long enough to know how these conversations went. We had them often enough. “Coax away.”

Another silence, a pause in the conversation, but only because she was festering some sort of comeback. The be all, end all conversation starter that would simultaneously make me open up to her and also solve all those problems, as if she were waving a magic wand and casting _Happio_. Little did she know I’d already asked Strange if it was possible. I’d also asked that Wiccan kid. The cute one. Both of them told me ‘Happio’ was no more magical than ‘Open Sesame’. 

“Could you tell me _one_ thing that’s bothering you?” she asked under her breath. “Just one little thing.” 

I glanced over at her. She was trying to do the puppy dog eyes at me. Carol doing puppy dog eyes was as super effective as an octopus on land. “I got confused for Matty Franklin the other day,” I said, leaning forward, hanging my head between my knees. “I’m the original. How does that even happen?”

She sighed again. “ _That’s_ what you’re spiralling over?”

“Not _only_ that. You asked for one thing.”

“Think you could let go of another deep dark identity crisis secret?”

It took me longer to answer than I think she appreciated. “Okay,” I said softly. “I feel like crud.”

“Why?”

I could only shrug.

“… Do you think you could walk me through the past couple days? Maybe we could—” 

I had to cut her off. “You’re doing that thing again,” I told her. She knew exactly what thing I was talking about. “Where you trick me into opening up to you about why I’m upset, but I’m serious, I don’t _know_ why. Not this time. This one’s different. I can’t describe it. I can’t—” 

Her hand touched my shoulder, then rubbed my back, bunching the fabric of my t-shirt. “Breathe,” she instructed, and I obeyed. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Jess. Try to keep your brain _right here_. Right now. Focus on me, on you, on all this. Those people down there. The lights on the tree. Just—don’t look at them too long. I think they’re lopsided and it’s starting to drive me a _little_ bit crazy.”

Forcing myself to sit up, to actually try straightening my spine, I took her advice. I looked at the scenery below, like something out of a tilt-shift photograph. It looked almost make-believe. There was no way that New York, of all places, could be this pretty. “We should go skating one day. Just us. Maybe Jen.”

“You know how things get when we invite Jen,” she pointed out. “It turns into an Avengers Christmas outing, and then M.O.D.O.K. shows up and we destroy half the city. Stop changing the topic.”

I could help but laugh, if only just a little. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

Carol inhaled sharply, her hand finally sliding from my back, returning to her own lap. “I want you to remember that you’re allowed to _tell me_ when you’re upset. And I’d like you to start answering my texts. And—” 

“I get it,” I cut in. “I’m a crappy friend.”

“No. Stop. Jess—I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to understand.”

“You wouldn’t get it,” I confessed, bowing my head once more.

I knew better than to think that would set her mind at ease. “A minute ago, you told me you didn’t know. Now I wouldn’t understand,” she said. Carol has a way about hiding just how annoyed with me she was, could keep a level voice when dealing with me. Sometimes I needed somebody to yell at me. I’m just glad it was never her doing it. “So which is it? Really.”

The longer I sat there twiddling my thumbs, the harder it got to vindicate the response I had mulling over in my brain. It was stupid. Admitting to it now, after all this, would make the entire trip feel petty. Maybe—maybe if I was lucky, or in an alternate universe where good things happened to me—she would take my silence for recognition, or acknowledgement, and if I did it for long enough, she would assume I had healed myself just through meditation and big thinks.

God forbid one of my assumptions ever come true. That’s not how Carol operated. At least not with me. She saw me as a project, the cranky old woman that could be taught how to love if pushed to her limits, forced into new situations and meeting new people. All too often she invited me to one of her army parties, surrounding me with men whose egos were bigger than their—well, y’know. People with actual issues. Post-traumatic stress. Shell shock. Anger problems. Sometimes, on my bad days, I felt like those were her attempts to normalize me. Remind me that I was just a girl too deep into my own head to realize I was actually, when you think about it, perfectly fine.

She never made it overt, though. She was a coddler. A cuddler. Carol would never try to make me feel _bad_ to make me feel better. Her hand reached out again, settling on my knee, squeezing it gently. Another subtle reminder that she was still here, that she wasn’t go anywhere, and that she expected an answer sometime soon.

I swallowed back the broken bits of my pride, cutting in my throat, closing my eyes as I took in a breath of the cold winter air. “Do you—have you ever had a friend, and—who was super confident, and strong, and independent, who at _every_ occasion tries to remind you that she doesn’t need anybody to look after her, but you—but deep down, you know that if you take your eyes off of her for a second, she could—” Talking suddenly got far too difficult, I choked on my words. She squeezed my thigh again, reaching to take my hand in hers, squeezing that too. “If you’re not careful, Carol, you’re going to die, and I—I don’t know—I don’t know how I’m gonna make it without you.”

For a while there, all I could feel was the warmth of her hand over mine. Neither of us spoke, I’m not entire sure either of us breathed. It was a moment of complete stillness, offset only by the light blistering snow and the world still ploughing forward below us. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said finally. Adamantly. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

I choked out a laugh. It might have been a sob, but I didn’t want to think about that. “That’s _bull_! You can’t—you’re allowed to worry about me when I tell you nothing’s wrong, but I’m not allowed to worry about you over something _legitimately_ possible? Damnit, Carol, you need to listen to your doctor! You could _die_ , you shouldn’t be flying, you shouldn’t be treating every situation like you have a death wish! I’m not ready to lose you!” My voice went timid, quiet as a mouth. “—I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to lose you.”

This time when things went silent, it felt wholly different. I managed the courage to look over and up, seeing Carol trying to hold back tears of her own. I sniffed, pulling myself closer, resting my head on her shoulder. My arm looped around her waist, and she put a hand on my shoulder, and we sat there together until she finally worked up the ability to speak once more. “I don’t want to go,” she confessed under her breath. 

“Nobody’s forcing you to leave,” I whispered, thumb brushing on her hip. “But I’m forcing you to stay grounded.”

I could feel her nodding, my hair getting caught in the movement. “Okay,” she said, sounding surprisingly committal, which was rare for her. “Okay. If it’s going to make you stop being mopey, and dwelling on things, and get you back into the world of the living, I’ll do it. For you.” My eyes closed, hand pulling her closer, grateful for the company and the warmth. “But if I can’t fly, how are we getting down from here?”

“I’m not expecting you to go cold turkey,” I said quietly, nuzzling myself against her. It was like we were at my place, watching some terrible movie on the couch when the building’s heat went out. All I needed were a couple blankets covering my toes and I’d feel right at home. “You get to fly one more time. Slowly. Straight down to the ground.”

“You’re no fun,” she murmured, tilting her own head to rest atop mine. “But… thanks for being concerned about me.”

A small smile tugged on my lips. “If I didn’t worry about you, who would? Tony?”

“Don’t even joke,” she huffed, “he actually remembered how I like my coffee. There’s a future there.”

I snorted, covering my face with my free hand. “Right. Okay. And where does that leave _Peter_?”

She punched me in the leg, and I heard her say the words ‘You’re one—’ come out of her mouth before she stifled herself. It sounded an awful lot like ‘You’re one to talk, Miss Clint Barton’. I was glad she didn’t finish the thought. Of all the things I kept bottled up, that was the thing I most tried to avoid.

“Peter’s nice,” I said, hoping to cut the awkward silence, ultimately unsure of how well it would work. “You guys should… hang out.”

Carol didn’t laugh, but she did seem to relax herself, if her posture and rigidity were anything to go by. “I’m still hungry,” she said, expertly changing the subject right as I felt my own stomach lurch.

I nodded, reaching into my pocket to take out my phone, checking the time. “Let’s go get street meat,” I suggested. “There’s a good hot dog guy by my place. We could walk back.” Even without looking, I could feel her glaring at me. “We could take the subway back.”

Right as I started to push myself off of her, she increased her hold on me to keep me in place. “Let’s take a picture,” she suggested, tapping the screen of my phone. “Your followers on Twitter would be upset to know we hung out and there was no photographic evidence.”

Cracking another smile, I tilted my head up to brush her hair out of the way, bettering my vantage point to turn on the cell’s camera, holding it out at arm’s length, trying to angle it to get both of our massive heads into the frame. The flash went off, and we posed again, taking a second, then a third. For the fourth, I leaned in and straightened out, kissing her cheek. On the fifth, she turned her head towards mine, placing her hand on my chin, blocking our faces from the lens, and kissed me back. 

I don’t remember taking a sixth.


End file.
